1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates broadly to the treating of petroleum crude oil, and more particularly to the removal of sulfur from the crude oil.
2. Prior Art
With the increasing emphasis on pollution and the resulting demand for low sulfur content petroleum crude oil, a severe need for economically producing low sulfur crude has arisen in view of the shortage of natural low sulfur crude.
In most oil refineries today the sulfur is generally removed after the crude oil has been fractionated which requires the use of different desulfurization processes, as well as expensive equipment which have high maintenance costs and require extreme operating conditions. Examples of prior art processes can be seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 59,177, 1,942,054, 1,954,116, 2,177,343, 2,321,290, 2,322,554, 2,348,543, 2,361,651, 2,481,300, 2,772,211, 3,294,678, 3,402,998 and 3,699,037. However, these processes are not readily adapted to treating crude oil.